The Sunday Mail.
David Cameron and Barack Obama yesterday staged a 35-minute ‘treadmill summit’ side by side at a G8 gathering dominated by the Euro crisis. Their crunch talks came as a group of influential Conservative MPs with close links to the Prime Minister and Chancellor George Osborne unveiled dramatic emergency proposals to be taken in the event of ‘Eurogeddon’ – the increasingly likely prospect of a currency meltdown. The ideas include £7 billion cuts in welfare benefits and rejecting EU moves to improve workers’ rights.
One day after Facebook rolled out its much-anticipated IPO, some less-than-enthused analysts are already warning their clients against buying the social media site’s shares. Brian Wieser, an analyst at Pivotal Research Group in New York, said that Facebook’s shares were implausibly priced, leading him to put a ‘sell’ rating on the stock. Facebook’s less-than-stellar debut saw its shares end the day on Friday just 23 cents, or 0.6 per cent, higher than its initial price, at $38.23, valuing the company at $104.2billion – even though it only made $3.7billion last year. The shares opened up 11 per cent at a respectable price of $42.05 in the morning, and jumped as high as $45 at one point, only to fizzle out after initial technical difficulties delayed the start of the trading by about two hours Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/markets/article-2147091/Implausibly-priced-Facebook-shares-slapped-sell-rating-IPO-frenzy.html#ixzz1vP9bcvly
The turmoil in European markets this month has rocked other banking names. As Financial Mail reported last week, Kent County Council stopped using Santander UK to deposit its funds over concerns of a banking crisis in Spain. The council has since had talks with Santander and says it has been reassured that the bank is ‘rock solid’
The Telegraph.
The wealthiest eurozone nations must support the weaker, indebted nations such as Greece and Portugal or face the prospect of the currency union breaking up.”Eurozone countries must either stand behind their currency or face up to the prospect of Greek exit with all the risks that could involve,” Mr Osborne, who watched the Champions League final with his German counterpart Wolfgang Schaeuble last night, warned of “enormous risks” to the UK economy if the crisis is not tackled. The Chancellor backed austerity plans for indebted nations but also put forward the idea of common euro-area bonds and more intervention from the ECB as ways to halt the imemdiate crisis
French President Francois Hollande said he will make proposals for eurobonds at an upcoming European summit as he outlines his ideas to stimulate growth and help ailing economies within the eurozone.
The FT.
G8 leaders on Saturday vowed to “strengthen and reinvigorate” their economies while pointedly “recognizing” that each country might pursue different policy paths in a statement that reflected the enduring split between proponents of greater stimulus or austerity. The statement was issued just after midday from the Camp David retreat in Maryland, near Washington, where the leaders have gathered for the one day meeting hosted by Barack Obama
Britain is in recession. More than half of young Spaniards are out of work. The Greek people are turning away from the political mainstream. But over the past two years, the leaders of Europe’s largest countries have been telling the world there is no alternative. Every day that this denial has continued, faith in the ability of any politician to bring real change has ebbed away. The divide in politics now is between those who think the lesson of the past two years is to offer more of the same and those of us who know now is the time for a different course. It is a divide between those who face the global economic storm having run out of ideas and those with a plan for putting right what has gone so disastrously wrong. As this crisis has deepened, David Cameron has spent his energy engaging in political positioning, on show again in his speech to the Institute of Directors this week. His response to every downturn is to lecture the eurozone and to argue that nothing is his fault. But the reality is that his economic failure has let Britain down. His intellectual failure is central to the inaction that is holding back the European and global economy. It is costing jobs in Britain and across the world, as well as destroying faith in our democracy to meet the challenges we face.
